2/29/2024 0 Comments White fronted goose sounds![]() If you had no luck hunting them on one area, you may get a better chance when they move to a new feeding site. Specklebellies select feeding fields at random, but once they start using a field, they generally continue coming back until the food supply is exhausted. Study the movement patterns of the geese throughout the season, identifying feeding places, loafing areas, roosting sites and flyways between each. Then return well before daybreak to set up. Find out who owns land the birds are using, and see if they'll grant permission for a hunt. If you're lucky, a flock or two will be feeding in areas where you already have permission to hunt. When the season opens, it's time to figure out where the geese are. If you located flocks of white-fronts last winter, try to obtain permission to hunt some of the fields where you found them. A flock in a particular area last winter will usually be in the same vicinity this year and next year, too, if habitat conditions remain the same. Fortunately, specklebellies are fairly predictable, wintering in the same general area year after year. It's best to obtain permission to hunt several fields if possible, because there's no way to know where geese will be from day to day during the hunting season. ![]() But geese sometimes damage winter wheat crops, and there are plenty of landowners who allow respectable sportsmen to goose hunt if plans are laid well before the season. Many Southern farmers lease their fields for hunting or hunt the land themselves. Secure permission to hunt on farms you suspect geese will use during the coming winter. If you hunt them right, with a large spread of decoys set out before first light in an area you've scouted, a specklebelly hunt represents a considerable investment of time.īegin preparing well before the season. Hunting geese of any sort is a lot of trouble, and because they are less common and more wary than Canadas or snows, white-fronts present a special challenge. ![]() They somehow seem "wilder" than other geese, and are thus among the most highly prized members of their clan. Since 1962, hunters have retrieved an annual average of 81,000.Īs geese go, white-fronts are wary birds-more difficult to approach closely, less tolerant of human intrusions. ![]() The mid-continent population - birds using the Central and Mississippi flyways - has grown in recent years, with visual estimates of 700,000. Small flocks sometimes are seen in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and Atlantic coastal states, but the largest wintering flocks are in natural wetlands and agricultural lands of Louisiana, southeast Texas and southeast Arkansas. Major waves of white-fronts wing into the South in October and November from breeding grounds in arctic Canada and Alaska. Their voice is distinctive: high-pitched and melodious, like laughter. While Canada geese glide down like huge bombers to a landing, white-fronts often careen out of the sky, sideslipping or butterflying down in a near vertical descent. They are medium-sized geese, most weighing 4-6 pounds, rather slender and agile on the wing. The name "white-front" notes the white patch or "front" immediately behind the bill of adult birds. Most hunters know the greater white-fronted goose as "specklebelly," a reference to the broken black barring on the breast of mature birds.
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